Watercolour – Yuanfan Yang

   in Piano International (Nov, 2017)
The famous Schubert B-flat Impromptu is a brave way to begin for a 20-year old, but Yang caresses it so beautifully that one becomes aware of a new, special voice. Born in Edinburgh in 1997, Yang has huge character, as evidenced by his Chopin Etude Op 25/11. He even succeeds in plumbing the depths of the elusive Fantaisie, though loses momentum here and there.

Liszt’s ‘La campanella’ has legerdemain but is ultimately uninvolving; yet he captures the depth of the ‘Vallée d’Obermann’. It’s useful to have Yang’s Aquarelles, pieces with a harmonic language individual enough not to be dismissed as pseudo/post-Debussy. Jianzhong Wang’s arrangement of a traditional folksong is fragile and …